THE MOMENT OF TRUTH AND FEEDBACK!
Our week got a proper kick start when Ilkka gave us a 30 minutes session on social media, content marketing and digital presence. In my opinion these were the best 30 minutes during this week. I learnt a lot and I'm really happy Ilkka was able to fix the schedules and give us another session next Monday. Thanks for listening to our feedback and taking it into action!
Ilkka pointed out that social media really is SOCIAL. It’s building up engagement and it’s never a one way conversation. Especially when we are talking about B2C. So many companies are still way too slow on answering their customers or at worst, they don’t answer at all.
Ilkka getting us into the Christmas spirit!
Then we moved on to what is the most important in business. In Ilkka’s words: The moment of truth! Why do customers buy from you? You have to give them a reason (to JUMP!). I had never thought of it the way that customer are actually taking a big risk by choosing to your company. So putting yourself in customer’s shoes and looking at it from their perspective, helps to define the product/service you are selling.
Since way of doing business is changing all the time, so is marketing. The companies need paid media, owned media and earned media. Here is a great article about the differences. Earned media, really is the moment of trust. It defines if you have been able to deliver what you have promised. If not, sooner or later that will show in your sales. Bad reviews travel fast these days and they can really harm your brand. When the whole marketing gets too deep and complicated it’s always good to go back to the basics. Ilkka reminded us how marketing is just two things according to Seth Godin :
We also had two guest speakers on Monday, Petteri Avilia and Riina Laaksonen. They are both entrepreneurs and told us their story. Petteri has done some bad choices in the past but is now successful in his businesses again. He said his key was that people still trusted him and welcomed him back with open arms after prison. Petteri top 3 how to build a brand were: credibility, trust and how recognisable you are. However I think the best thing he said was about how he defines success: “Success is that people feel good when they are near you“. It was such a good way of expressing it, nothing about materialistic things or money. Just about the feeling your presence creates to other people.
The day was organised by one of our students Anna Shramchuk together with a group of business students that also study in Laurea. We got to taste some pancakes made with Proteinvital, a product Anna is working on. We also made a small picture assignment for Anna and Riina Laaksonen by using befunky.com. This was a new tool for me that I had never used before. It’s always good to learn new things and this is the pic we made for Riina and her wellness studio Lupaus.
I’ve noticed my blogs are getting longer and longer by the week. As a reader I don't like it when blogs are too long since I lose interest. Therefore I’ll try to be short and sweet about the rest of the week.
Thursday was presentation day again. This time the project company SSM had brought a big crew with them, a total of 5 persons including the CEO from Hungary. So the expectations were high. Unfortunately I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. On previous cases we’ve always received a proper feedback after presentations, both from the company and from the teachers: “This was a good point, we would’ve liked to see more of that” etc. Now, there was basically just silence from everybody or a few of words like “You were professional”. It was a bit awkward and I really missed the concrete feedback.
One of the best bosses I’ve ever had told me once: “If you are not getting enough feedback, make sure you ask for it!” So, here I am, asking for feedback. I really want to improve my skills and learn more. That’s the reason why I came to school in the first place. So hopefully the feedback is back in the agenda on the next project. By the way, a huge thank you to everybody who answered our SSM survey. We got an amazing 266 answers!
Our next project is about the Talousguru-competition. They are launching a side competition where students will make a video. Our task is to get the student who are not so interested in economics to take part in the video competition. It's a lot of work but I'm sure we will manage. I'll be back next week to tell you how how we are progressing!
